Laura Zweig

 
Laura Zweig demanded dance lessons when she was four years old and is still dancing seven
decades later. Laura’s early training was with Ernestine Stodelle in New Haven, Connecticut.
Ms. Stodelle worked with Doris Humphrey and Jose Limon, two of the pioneers of modern
dance. She instilled in Laura the technique and love of the breathy fall and rebound style of
modern dance, an appreciation for the roots of the art of modern dance, and a desire to
creative emotive, dramatic choreography herself.
 
Laura joined the faculty of DanceVisions the second year of its existence, 1993, starting with a handful of classes and now teaching 3 adult and 12 children’s classes a week. She has been a member of the Board of DanceVisions for about 25 years and the president for about 15.
 
Laura found DanceVisions to be the perfect place to develop the choreography she had always wanted to work on. As a very collaborative studio it lends itself to dancers easily finding other dancers to work with. She started her own performing group and began choreographing dances about the social justice issues that had always been important to her.  Through her choice of music and themes, Laura also leads discussions with her young students on issues such as racism, climate change, gender equality, war and peace as they work on choreography set to music by such musicians as Michael Franti, Johnny Clegg and Holly Near.  Since 2012 Laura and her adult, child and teenage dancers have been collaborating with the activist musicians Emma’s Revolution, performing every other year in Cubberley Community Theatre.  They have danced to songs such as “There’s a Fire in Ferguson” (about the police killing of Michael Brown),“Kilimanjaro” (about climate change),and “Silence and Lies” (about war and anti-war protests.)
 
One of the joys in Laura’s life is seeing new generations of dancers. Currently two members of her adult performing group started dancing with her when they were preschool age. And
recently a woman brought her three-year-old daughter to begin taking dance lessons with
Laura because she herself had danced with Laura at age three.

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To contact Laura, please email laura@laurazweig.com or call 650 324 8751.